Tag Archives: shame

TheresaEschmann, a licensed professional counselor (LPC) and addiction family specialist in private practice in St. Louis, experienced firsthand the power of denial in adult children of parents with alcohol use disorders. All her life, Eschmann had witnessed her mother struggle with this disorder, yet upon finding her mother dead with a bottle of alcohol in her hand, Eschmann’s first response was denial. She couldn’t believe that her mother’s alcohol use disorder had caused her death, initially insisting that someone must have poisoned her.

“I … took a chemical dependency proficiency certification to try to get some understanding of what killed her because it couldn’t have just been alcohol,” Eschmann says, explaining her thinking at the time. “Alcohol made you sick. It made you have delirium tremens. It made you see things. But it couldn’t have killed you.”

Denial is often a strong coping mechanism for adult children of parents with alcohol use disorders, says Lisa Kruger, an LPC and psychotherapist and the owner of Stepping Stone Psychotherapy in the Washington, D.C., metro area. “They have to deny any feelings of sadness or anger that they might have in order to survive,” she says.

This denial extends to adult children’s own potential struggles with substance use disorders. Keith Klostermann, an assistant professor in the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology and the director of clinical training for the marriage and family therapy program at Medaille College, had a female client whose father chronically abused alcohol, and her own drinking often led to fights with her boyfriend. One of these drunken fights resulted in her breaking her foot. Even so, she maintained a permissive attitude toward drinking and brushed it off as a recreational activity.

The client was firmly in denial and not yet ready to address either her experience of growing up around substance abuse issues or her own drinking habits, says Klostermann, a licensed marriage and family therapist and licensed mental health counselor who maintains an active practice in New York. Counselors may be eager to push clients to explore these issues, but Klostermann warns that discussing the implications of this childhood experience before clients are ready is a recipe for disaster. Taking that approach may lead to problems establishing a therapeutic alliance or cause clients to end counseling prematurely, he explains. Instead, he advises, counselors can help clients connect the dots and arrive at an understanding that their behavior makes sense based on their experiences growing up.

Asking the right questions

Being an adult child of a parent with a substance use disorder is not uncommon. According to the National Association for Children of Addiction, 1 in 4 children in the United States (or approximately 18.25 million children) live in a family with a parent who is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Yet, Eschmann, a certified master addiction counselor and a member of the American Counseling Association, says it’s her sense that asking whether clients grew up in homes where addiction was present is often skipped over in clinical assessments.

In addition, because these individuals have frequently learned to minimize, discount or deny the implications of growing up in a home with substance abuse, they aren’t particularly likely to seek counseling for those issues.

Being a child of a parent who abused substances “may be the elephant in the room, but that may not be what brings them in. They may not recognize it,” says Klostermann, an ACA member. “The stuff that happens to us when we were younger, a lot of times we carry with us, [but] we don’t even realize why we do the stuff we do. We just sort of do it out of inertia.”

Klostermann and Kruger say that many of their clients present with relationship problems, anxiety, stress, depression and substance use. Often, the counselors note, these issues result from growing up with a parent who had a substance use disorder.

The environment of walking on eggshells around a parent who is under the influence of a substance creates and breeds anxiety for the child, Klostermann explains. When the child becomes an adult and engages in stressful situations in college (e.g., exams) or at work (e.g., deadlines), the person’s anxiety can snowball, he adds. Likewise, they may struggle with adversity and withdraw socially because they find it difficult to navigate relationships. This isolation can lead to depression, which is a real challenge, Klostermann says.

Counselors can look for possible warning signs that their adult clients were exposed to substance abuse issues in the home as children, Klostermann says. For instance, clients might engage in avoidant strategies (e.g., using alcohol as a way to cope with stress) or have a permissive attitude about substance use (e.g., “I don’t drink much. I only have a 12-pack a day.”).

Kruger, an ACA member who specializes in the areas of depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, trauma and addiction, had a male client who came to see her for help with relationship issues and high anxiety. In his intake paperwork, the client wrote that he drank nightly, so she asked him how many drinks he had in a week. “It was 50 to 60 a week,” he replied, “but now it’s only 20 or 30.” This response was a big red flag, yet he didn’t realize that his drinking was a problem, she says.

To help clients recognize unhealthy behaviors, Kruger often uses motivational interviewing techniques. For example, with this client, a counselor might ask, “How is drinking 20 or 30 drinks a week working out for you?”

If counselors see potential warning signs, Klostermann advises asking questions about current substance use patterns, previous substance use, parental substance use and family attitudes around drinking. For example, counselors might ask the following questions: What was it like growing up in your home? What does drinking a lot or having a good time mean to you? What does that look like? What are the holidays and celebrations like in your family? What is a typical family dinner or birthday party like?

“Substance use is built around so many family functions and gatherings and celebrations,” Klostermann says. So, if a client comments, “My parents liked to party,” counselors could follow up by asking the client to explain what that means and what the implications are for the client’s life (e.g., increased violence after a parent drank, embarrassment when a parent became intoxicated at a social event). Klostermann explains that these types of questions help clinicians gain a better understanding of not just the acute nature of growing up in an environment with substance abuse but also the context of it — for instance, whether parental drug use led to a more permissive attitude at home or whether the child adopted unhealthy coping strategies.

In addition, adult children often find it easier to talk about others rather than themselves, Klostermann says. By asking these types of nonjudgmental questions (e.g., “Did drinking like that seem to work out for your mom?”), counselors can help clients create insight and awareness by changing the frame of reference, he explains. This technique helps clients gain an understanding about not only the severity of their parents’ alcohol or substance use but also the emotional implications of that behavior, he adds.

After counselors establish that awareness, Klostermann says, they can connect it to the client’s present situation (e.g., “Does drinking affect your relationships or grades?”). He suggests that counselors could also try to educate clients by saying something along the following lines: “Given what you described about your [parent’s] history, it’s not uncommon for people that grow up in these homes to sometimes exhibit certain behaviors. Sounds like that might be happening for you.”

Counselors are “planting the seed [and] leaving the door open but also helping [clients] to connect the dots and understand this is what’s going on and here’s why,” he explains.

In addition to asking about clients’ personal and family substance use histories, Kruger often focuses her questions on clients’ relationships with their parents. These questions can help bring out emotions such as shame, guilt or anxiety that stem from being a child of a parent with a substance use disorder, she says.

Emotional and attachment wounds

“Adult children of alcoholics … have difficulty identifying and expressing emotions,” Kruger explains, “because when they were kids, they had to set aside their own emotions — maybe they had to care for their parents. … They didn’t understand what their emotions were because what they saw in their parents’ relationship was inconsistent presentation or organization of emotions between them and maybe even between the parent and child too.”

To help clients who are having difficulty expressing their emotions, Kruger provides a sheet that shows 50 visual representations of emotions and asks clients to name the emotions that describe how they are feeling. She says this activity, which she refers to as an “emotional cheat sheet,” is “a good springboard … for clients who really don’t have the language [for their emotions].”

Kruger and Eschmann find that codependency is another common issue for adult children of parents with alcohol use disorders. Because these adult children grow up being sensitive to the needs of their parents — even to the point of ignoring their own needs — they often engage in approval seeking, which leads to codependency, Kruger explains. This need for approval and to avoid conflict can result in these individuals seeking acceptance from others who do not treat them well, which causes lower self-esteem, she says.

Often, clients who are codependent will assume they are OK because they are not the ones causing problems, Eschmann observes. She questions clients on codependent behavior by asking about their controlling behaviors, approval-seeking behaviors, anxiety, and distortion around intimacy and separation.

For Kruger, it all comes back to attachment — how bonds are created and broken. Parents who struggle with alcohol use disorders are typically inconsistent in their parenting and in their show of emotion toward their children. As she points out, this can create attachment wounds and be stressful for children growing up under these circumstances. Children may be doubly affected because they still depend on parents for care and for getting many of their emotional needs met. At the same time, these children often aren’t in a position to fight or to flee elsewhere, she adds.

Counselors can help adult clients gain awareness of how their current relationship patterns are affected by their childhood experiences, Kruger says. One technique she finds helpful involves taking the client’s experiences and imagining how those experiences would be perceived on The Brady Bunch. As a member of The Brady Bunch family, Kruger explains, the client would notice instantly if a partner or spouse were abusive because of the contrast with the sitcom family. However, growing up in a stressful environment with one or both parents suffering from an alcohol use disorder tends to distort a person’s perceptions of what is “normal” or acceptable.

For example, having a parent who drank and was inconsistently present when the client was a child would affect the client’s ability to evaluate his or her current relationships. If the client has a partner who sometimes withholds affection or emotion, is manipulative and comes around only when he or she wants something, the client won’t necessarily notice any red flags because those are the circumstances and relationship patterns the client knows from growing up, Kruger explains.

Kruger also gives short attachment assessments and finds that these clients often present with anxious attachments. “In relationships, [they cater] to the other person because that attachment anxiety comes up and that need for approval keeps them in relationships” — including bad ones, she says.

To help clients see the connection between their view of themselves and their relationships with others, Kruger will have clients write out how they view themselves, how they view other people and how they view the world. Then, they will discuss how these views are created, how clients are perpetuating these views and how they would like to see themselves in relationships.

The exercise is particularly helpful for clients who find themselves in toxic relationships, Kruger adds. “It’s really rare [for] somebody in a toxic relationship [who is] being manipulated to say, ‘I see myself in high regard, and I think I’m great.’ It’s usually the opposite,” she says.

Making meaning of conflicted feelings

Another crucial part of adult children’s recovery is sorting through their conflicted feelings of love, disappointment, anger and shame. In fact, both Eschmann and Kruger find that shame and guilt are common presenting issues.

Children often feel that a parent’s situation is their fault, and they find it difficult to process these multilayered emotions, Kruger notes. They simultaneously feel disappointment in and love for their parent. For adult children, processing and making sense of these feelings is a substantial part of recovery, she explains. Counselors should acknowledge that shame piece and how clients have “put that burden on themselves and carried that burden with them throughout adulthood,” Kruger advises.

“Shames translates to I am bad,” Kruger points out. “Even if [clients] don’t present it on the outside, they’re usually coming in with some pretty damaged self-esteem and are already judging themselves.” In part for that reason, she emphasizes the importance of creating a nonjudgmental atmosphere in counseling.

When self-esteem, thoughts and feelings are involved, Kruger uses cognitive behavior therapy techniques. She says she has experienced a good deal of success with an exercise that blends cognitive restructuring and emotion identification. In the exercise, clients look at a triggering event and then identify their negative self-talk and automatic thought, the feeling that this thought creates, evidence to strengthen this thought, evidence against this thought and a new thought that they can believe.

The exercise allows clients to recognize their negative self-talk and its consequences and enables them to reconfigure these self-demeaning thoughts in a way that is believable to them, Kruger explains. For example, clients might think that they are “bad” and list all of the evidence they have for that thought. Next, they could counter that thought with the fact that they recently got a raise at work. Finally, they could create a new thought that sometimes they do good things, Kruger says.

“These clients need validation,” Eschmann emphasizes. “They didn’t get it growing up.” Instead, she explains, the parent who was abusing alcohol or other substances has often discounted the adult child’s feelings and experiences.

Klostermann also stresses the importance of normalizing these clients’ emotions and experiences. These clients may not realize — or, in some cases, perhaps don’t want to realize — the impact on them of their parents’ drug or alcohol use, he says. He notes how difficult it can be for clients to verbalize that their parents had or have a drinking problem, especially if they maintain a glorified version of their parents. For this reason, counselors need to help clients understand that it is possible for them to love their parents while still recognizing that their parents made mistakes.

Kathleen Brown-Rice, department chair and associate professor in the Department of Counselor Education at Sam Houston State University, agrees. Counselors must keep in mind that the family member is someone whom the client still loves and cares about, she says. Counselors can give clients the “space to say that you can love somebody and also be disappointed by their behaviors. You can love someone, and they can love you, and they can still hurt you,” she says. “[It’s] helpful for clients to understand that it’s more complicated than just [their parents are] bad or they don’t love [them].”

Eschmann helps clients focus on unresolved grief, which is common for adult children who grew up with parental substance abuse. Adult children are often hesitant to admit that their mom left them alone all night with a stranger or that their father came home drunk and had violent arguments with their mother, Eschmann says. They might not want to admit that these past events are why they get triggered today during certain situations.

“[Clients] have to accuse before [they] can excuse,” Eschmann asserts. “They have to go back and [ask], ‘What happened to me?’ This isn’t about [the parents] anymore. It’s about [the client].” If clients become more aware of what happened to them and what kind of environment they lived in that made them fearful and anxious today, then they can start healing, she adds.

Mindful resilience

Adult children who grew up in the same environment with substance abuse can respond very differently. One person may be angry, whereas another may be empathetic, and still another may end up also struggling with a substance use disorder. This raises the question of why some adult children of parents with alcohol use disorders are more resilient than others.

Resilience is “critical in terms of shaping kids’ development as they transcend into adulthood in terms of the choices that they make and the way that they deal with stress and conflict,” Klostermann points out. Based on his clinical experience, Klostermann suggests that having other healthy outlets (e.g., extracurricular activities such as sports, positive role models such as grandparents) and an ability to contextualize what is happening help to foster resilience.

Brown-Rice, an LPC and a member of ACA, acknowledges that there is more than simple genetics at play with resiliency. “Resiliency is not a moral characteristic. It’s a function of our brain,” she says. It’s “how our brain controls for those genetics … how that resiliency comes in and how we support that.”

Recently, she, along with Gina Forster (a lecturer in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Otago) and several other colleagues, conducted a study funded partly by a grant from the Center for Brain and Behavior Research at the University of South Dakota on college students who had similar experiences of being adult children of parents with substance use disorders. The participants identified as either engaging in risky substance use (the vulnerable group) or not engaging in risky substance use (the resilient group).

“Overall, their experience being raised by a parent who met the criteria for having a substance use disorder appeared similar,” says Brown-Rice, who presented the findings at the ACA 2017 Conference in San Francisco. However, “vulnerable individuals had lower scholastic performance … [and] reported poor overall psychological, physical and social health and more polysubstance use.”

The study also revealed another difference: The vulnerable group had a short allele of the serotonin transporter gene, which meant they were more likely to react to stressful events. “[This group] had a reduced uptake of their serotonin, which can increase depression and stressful life events,” explains Brown-Rice, associate editor of the Journal of Addictions & Offender Counseling.

Brown-Rice and the other researchers also measured brain activity while the participants viewed positive images (e.g., a cuddly bear), negative images (e.g., a crying baby) and neutral images (e.g., a chair). They found that the vulnerable group had altered brain activity when processing negative images. This group recognized the negative image but refused to store it, Brown-Rice explains.

Brown-Rice hypothesizes that this refusal to store negative images is an important factor in resiliency levels. To illustrate, imagine that you are walking outside and see a stick. Initially, your brain may think that the stick is a snake, so you jump back. As Brown-Rice explains, when you first see the stick, the amygdala activates and warns you because it looks like something that the brain remembers could hurt you. But after taking a closer look (i.e., storing the image), you realize it is just a stick, so you relax.

Resiliency depends on our ability to realize that the stick is not a snake. Some people, however, may be more likely because of brain functioning or genetic variations to see the stick and just react by running, Brown-Rice says. Thus, counselors can help certain clients by nurturing the parts of the brain that activate during stressful situations, she explains.

Brown-Rice incorporates this research into her clinical practice. She tells her clients that they have a resilient part of the brain — the prefrontal cortex — and that in session, they can work on controlling their brain and building their optimism and resiliency. She suggests that counselors use mindfulness techniques, such as guiding clients in breathing exercises and finding a safe place to go when triggered, because mindfulness is effective in calming the amygdala, which activates during stressful events.

Consistency also helps promote clients’ resiliency, Brown-Rice notes. If counselors are inconsistent, she says, that will put clients on edge.

Klostermann agrees. He finds that having a clear agenda helps to create a sense of safety and build rapport with clients. He informs them about his clinical approach and what to expect during the session and tells them there is no assumption on his part that they will schedule another appointment.

Kruger recommends using clients’ resiliency to help strengthen their internal sense of self. After all, she points out, adult children of parents with alcohol use disorders have already developed survival strategies, such as caring for siblings in areas in which the parent was lacking.

Instead of simply telling clients that they have strengths, Kruger uses motivational interviewing, which allows clients to identify and recognize their strengths themselves. For example, rather than telling a client, “You seem to be good at your job,” she might ask, “In what ways are you praised at your job?” This question helps clients reach the conclusion themselves, which builds their internal positive regard.

One more piece of advice for working with adult children of parents with substance use disorders: Counselors shouldn’t be afraid to change their approach if it’s not working. For example, Brown-Rice says, research has shown that people who have a short allele for serotonin may be resistant to cognitive behavior treatment. “If clients are not responding, we have to think maybe we need to change,” she says. “Maybe we need to move. Maybe we need to [incorporate] some of these mindfulness techniques. Maybe we need to do something else.”

Sometimes, it may be the counselor, not the client, who is being resistant, she stresses.

Halting the domino effect

The desire to get treatment for someone with a substance use disorder often overshadows the way that addiction affects the person’s family and others who care about the person. It shouldn’t.

In her educational video on addiction in the family, Claudia Black, an expert in addiction, highlights a child’s drawing of his experience living in a home where substance abuse is present. The child draws images of dominoes and writes, “Alcohol and drugs are like dominoes. They knock down the person, who knocks down everyone, including themselves.” The child’s words illustrate the way that addiction permeates and affects the entire family, not just the person with the substance use disorder.

For the first two years after her mother died from alcohol-related causes, Eschmann found herself crying repeatedly. Her grief and denial led her to learn more about chemical dependency, addiction and adult children of parents with alcohol use disorders. Counselors need to understand that the family has an emotional illness as well, Eschmann emphasizes. This illness is just as progressive as what the person with the substance use disorder is facing, she adds.

Brown-Rice reminds clients that they are not responsible for their substance use issues, but they are responsible for how they respond to these issues. For adult children of parents with substance use disorders, this means learning how their childhood experiences affect their current behaviors and choices.

Adult children of parents with substance use issues often feel isolated. Support groups such as Al-Anon and Adult Children of Alcoholics are helpful because they provide opportunities for people with similar experiences to share their stories and come to the realization that they’re not alone, Kruger says.

Counselors should also help clients understand that their parents’ substance use is not their shame to carry and substance abuse is not a legacy that they have to repeat, Brown-Rice says. Then, clients will realize that choosing a different path doesn’t mean that they are being disrespectful or dishonoring their parents, she explains.

The hope is that this different path will stop the domino effect of addiction, shame, depression and pain.

In 2006, activist Tarana Burke founded the “me too” movement — a grassroots campaign to help survivors of sexual violence, particularly young women of color from low-wealth communities. Over time, the movement with a simple message — you are not alone — built a community of survivors from all walks of life.

In fall 2017, in the wake of allegations of sexual assault and harassment by film producer and entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men, “me too” went viral — and global — with a single hashtag. Social media feeds were suddenly flooded with #MeToo, sometimes accompanied by personal stories or alternately issued as a statement in itself.

In the year that has followed this mass call for awareness, stories of sexual harassment and assault have continued to come to light. The discussions about how to achieve safety and equality show no signs of flagging. Some of these conversations are happening in counseling practices as counselors help clients process their own #MeToo stories.

For licensed professional counselor (LPC) Sarah Kate Valatka, a private practitioner in Blacksburg, Virginia, the most striking element of #MeToo has been the sense of community — albeit an unchosen one — the movement has created for survivors. That feeling of community not only helps clients feel less isolated but also engenders hope as they see other survivors navigating their own trauma, says Valatka, an American Counseling Association member whose practice specialties include addressing gender-based violence.

Other counselors say the movement is encouraging women who previously chose to remain silent about their experiences to seek help. “I absolutely believe this has empowered more women to come forward,” says Brooke Bagley, an LPC at the Sexual Assault Center of East Tennessee in Knoxville. “I have heard the narrative repeatedly — that many have been scared, isolated or unsure of the legitimacy of their own traumas, and this movement has given these individuals a voice.”

Indeed, Bagley says although the practice where she works has not seen a substantial increase in new clients, a number of people who had not previously thought of themselves as survivors have come in looking for help to process their experiences.

Charity Hagains, a licensed professional counselor supervisor who specializes in sexual trauma, says she and other counselors at the Noyau Wellness Center in Dallas have seen many new clients seeking help not for assault but for experiences they are just now realizing had crossed the line into sexual harassment. Hagains says she has commonly heard statements from clients such as, “It never occurred to me that this [behavior] wasn’t OK. Every boss I have ever had commented on my body.”

Hagains says the #MeToo movement has also caused many adult women to reconsider their younger experiences. Typical incidents these women have shared in session with Hagains include being pressured to show their bodies in a chatroom when they were preteens or being coerced into having sex as teenagers. At the time, they didn’t consider it coercion because they thought they were old enough to consent or had been drinking and thus excused the other person’s actions.

“It always made me feel awful,” clients have told Hagains. “I was ashamed, but I didn’t realize that it was something that other people would see as not my fault.”

Conversations such as these — both inside and outside of counselors’ offices — are long overdue, asserts Laura Morse, an LPC who specializes in relationship and sexual issues, including assault and trauma. Telling these stories has served to highlight how often sexual assault occurs, but clients are grappling with what comes next, she says.

“So much of the counseling journey with sexual assault survivors is figuring out the ‘and’ after identifying with #MeToo,” says Morse, a private practitioner in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “Empowering individuals after assault to write their narrative, decide their legal choices and how or if they want to share their story, that’s the part of the conversation that #MeToo leaves us grappling with as a community.”

Moving on from #MeToo

The journey to healing from sexual trauma often begins with defining what has happened to the client, Bagley says. Using psychoeducation, she talks to clients about what constitutes sexual assault or harassment. She also explains common reactions and responses to sexual trauma. Once clients have a better understanding of what they have experienced, Bagley says she can delve into how their trauma is manifesting and work toward the management of symptoms.

Shame and guilt often accompany sexual assault and can be difficult to move past, says Trish McCoy Kessler, an LPC and owner of Empower Counseling, a practice in Lynchburg, Virginia, that focuses on the needs of women and girls. She starts by normalizing what clients are feeling and emphasizing that the sexual violence or harassment they have experienced is not their fault.

Kessler, a member of ACA, uses cognitive behavior therapy to help clients note when they experience a negative emotion and identify the thoughts that are evoking that feeling. She then challenges those thoughts, asking clients to consider whether any evidence exists to support their negative self-talk. Simply instilling hope in clients that their feelings of shame and guilt will lessen over time can help reduce their anxiety and stress, Kessler adds.

Kessler also focuses on coping skills with clients, she says, because many people who have experienced trauma use maladaptive coping skills such as substance abuse and emotional eating. Kessler teaches clients to instead use positive skills such as meditation, reaching out to friends (to avoid isolation), listening to music and writing or journaling. She has found it especially helpful to suggest that clients (and particularly teen clients) keep a list of effective coping skills on their phones to refer to when they are feeling overwhelmed. Kessler also emphasizes the importance of self-care, including getting adequate sleep, getting the proper nutrition and engaging in regular exercise.

Hagains notes that many of her clients lack compassion for themselves. She encourages them to identify as survivors rather than victims and attempts to teach self-compassion by holding a mirror up to the compassion that her clients show to others. For example, Hagains asks clients to consider what they would say to a friend going through the same experiences. “It’s usually not something like, ‘You’re awful,’” she notes wryly. “If you would give your friend a hug, give yourself a hug,” she urges.

Hagains also asks clients to identify the shame statements that they tell themselves. Then she helps them create positive, affirming messages to replace the negative self-talk.

Over time, Bagley has created a five-phase model that she uses for clients who have experienced sexual trauma. In the first phase, she assesses and identifies the client’s level of trauma through a symptom-based checklist. She then explores the emotional, cognitive, physiological and behavioral responses the client is experiencing.

Phase 2 focuses on building rapport and establishing the therapeutic relationship. Because clients who have experienced trauma are very vulnerable, it is imperative to provide a nurturing and safe environment, Bagley emphasizes. Once she has established a bond with the client and a sense of safety, Bagley focuses on the person’s present strengths and explores how the client can use those strengths to cope with the trauma.

In the fourth phase, Bagley focuses on identifying specific emotions. She teaches clients to practice mindfulness by noting where on their bodies they feel certain emotions and what is happening around them when they experience these feelings. Bagley says this helps clients identify triggers and also aids in bridging the mind-body disconnect that can occur with recent sexual trauma.

In the fifth and final phase, clients build a narrative surrounding their trauma. “At this stage in the therapeutic process, clients should be displaying more stability and management of symptoms,” Bagley says. “This is often apparent through changes in the language clients use to describe their trauma experience, as well as a shift in self-view.”

At this point, Bagley has clients retell their trauma to desensitize their trauma response and to empower them to feel more in control of their story.

It takes a village

Morse often works with other professionals, including law enforcement, to help survivors of sexual violence. She tells clients there are different paths they can take as part of their treatment and asks them what makes sense or seems helpful to them. Some clients are empowered by learning about their legal rights, and the possibility of pursuing justice gives them a sense of agency. For other survivors, gaining strategies to manage anxiety is critical to their daily functioning, Morse says.

When clients choose to seek justice through the legal system, Morse offers to go to the police station with them and sit in on a meeting with detectives. Beforehand, she prepares clients by explaining that they will be asked numerous questions about what happened to them. She also educates them about how lengthy the legal process can be and the emotional toll it may take.

Many of Morse’s clients have experienced harassment at work, and in these cases, they often choose to file a complaint through their employer’s human resources department. To prepare these clients, Morse goes through their employee handbook so they fully understand the company’s harassment policies.

Morse also strives to help survivors of sexual violence feel safe again, which often requires connecting them with outside resources. She frequently recommends self-defense classes, noting that in many cities, there are now free classes offered for survivors of assault. In some cases, reestablishing a client’s sense of safety may require a change in phone number or residence.

For those who struggle with overwhelming anxiety, Morse is a big proponent of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and she refers these clients to a certified EMDR practitioner. If anxiety and depression are impeding her clients’ daily functioning, she has them meet with a psychiatrist to explore the need for short-term medication management of symptoms.

Morse says group therapy can also be a crucial therapeutic tool because it provides a way for survivors to share their stories with others who have experienced sexual trauma. Many community agencies and YWCAs offer free groups, she notes.

Morse also emphasizes the power of just being there for clients. “Many survivors of assault reflect that the most helpful part of the therapeutic process is simply having someone to listen and believe them on their journey,” she says. “Oftentimes, we’ll spend several sessions talking through the details and allowing a woman to rewrite her narrative as an assault survivor.”

When #MeToo is painful

Although counselors generally say that the #MeToo movement is socially necessary and can be personally empowering, they also note that for some survivors, the constant reminders of sexual trauma can have an unintended adverse effect.

“The movement can often feel like a double-edged sword in terms of awareness for survivors,” Bagley says. Although many survivors are grateful that the truth of the widespread nature of sexual violence is being made evident, the sheer volume of stories can be overwhelming. “It floods social media, news outlets [and] radio programs, leaving little escape for survivors,” Bagley explains. “Additionally, the backlash and negative media response to the movement has … a triggering and negative impact.”

Valatka agrees. “You [a survivor] may be on social media, and it’s just a normal day. Then someone shares, and it’s bringing it into your day — bringing it to survivors when they weren’t planning for it.”

Shaina Ali, an LPC and owner of Integrated Counseling Solutions in Orlando, Florida, says that when clients who are survivors of sexual assault or harassment bring up #MeToo, she uses an existential approach. “How does this affect your story? What does this mean for you?” Ali asks clients.

Her intent is to help clients focus on how hearing these stories affects their progress. In some cases, clients realize that they have handled potentially retraumatizing information better than they thought they might, says Ali, who specializes in trauma work. For others, their reactions are an indication that they have more trauma work to do. Ali notes that some of her clients who had come to her for issues unrelated to trauma realized that the #MeToo stories mirrored their own experiences — experiences they previously hadn’t recognized they needed to talk about.

Because #MeToo and other news stories related to mental health — such as the recent suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain — can potentially have an effect on any client, Ali always raises such topics in session. She says this serves two purposes: to check in and head off trouble before it starts and to give clients an opportunity to bring up experiences they haven’t previously been ready to share.

Sometimes the triggering comes from the casual conversation of people clients are close to, Hagains points out. As people talk about #MeToo, sexual assault and harassment survivors hear a lot of opinions being shared, some of which are full of blame. It is not uncommon to hear people say things such as, “Well, she went to his apartment, so she deserved it,” Hagains notes.

Hagains tells clients that in these cases, they need to set boundaries by telling friends or family members that they do not wish to discuss the topic and that they will have to agree to disagree. In certain cases, such as with casual Facebook friends, Hagains urges clients to decide how important it is for them to stay in contact. It may be in a client’s best interests to mute those who are making hurtful statements. Sometimes setting boundaries means limiting contact; other times it may become necessary to cease contact altogether.

What are men learning?

The larger goal of #MeToo is to change the way that men and society as a whole see — and treat — women. Is it working?

Hagains says the topic is definitely coming up in sessions with male clients. She says that about 90 percent of the men she counsels have asked her about behavior — as in what is OK and what isn’t.

“I think a lot of men are reexamining their roles,” she says. Many of them are realizing that what they thought was appropriate or complimentary to women can actually be offensive.

A familiar refrain that Hagains hears in session from male clients who are grappling with the implications of #MeToo: “I thought women liked to be complimented on their bodies.” She responds by telling them that it might be OK to say in a bar but definitely not at work.

Ali, an adjunct professor at both Central Florida University and the Chicago School of Psychology, has also heard increased discussion from men about the topic of sexual assault and harassment, both in her practice and in the classroom. Ali teaches clients and students about harassment, setting boundaries and establishing healthy relationships.

“The way I see it,” says Kessler, “is that #MeToo is not just for women. I want men to see, this is how you treat women.”

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Additional resources

To learn more about the topics discussed in this article, take advantage of the following select resources offered by the American Counseling Association:

Sex and sexuality are necessary, healthy and, arguably, sacred aspects of the human experience. What happens, though, when sex is used not to enhance intimacy and connection with others but, rather, becomes out of control? What happens when a person describes a clear set of personal values around sexual behavior yet consistently crosses his or her own boundaries and compromises personal sexual values? What happens when a person continues a pattern of sexual behavior despite detrimental consequences? Can a person be addicted to sex?

Although most forms of sexual expression are healthy, the sex addiction model posits that some individuals may develop compulsive, dependent relationships with sex. Critics of the sex addiction model suggest that the addiction label pathologizes nonnormative sexual behaviors (e.g., fetish, kink), yet true proponents of the model do not claim to define morally appropriate forms or frequencies of sexual acts. The focus, rather, is on one’s relationship with sex.

Just because a sexual behavior violates an individual’s personal values, religious or spiritual beliefs, or societal norms does not make it an addiction. Instead, sex addiction has specific defining characteristics:

Loss of control

Continued engagement despite negative consequences

Mental preoccupation or cravings

Thus, rather than being sex-negative, advocates of the sex addiction model work to identify those who are unable to control their sexual behavior, are experiencing distressing outcomes and are mentally preoccupied or craving sex. Once sex addiction is determined, individuals then can get the treatment and support they need to establish healthy sexuality.

A topic for debate

The notion that sex can be addictive still is debated among mental health professionals. Instead of addiction, alternative explanations for problematic sexual behaviors include impulse-control issues, obsessive-compulsive disorder, neuroticism, learned behavior, a form of sensation seeking, internalized sex-negative messages or manifestations of a mental health issue such as bipolar disorder.

The addiction model, however, purports that the primary issue is an out-of-control relationship with sex resulting from changes in chemical messengers in the brain. Specifically, naturally reinforced behaviors, such as eating and sex, are linked to the release of neurotransmitters (i.e., dopamine) related to pleasure and reinforcement. A naturally rewarding behavior such as sex can become a supernormal stimulus leading to dysregulation in the dopaminergic system. The resulting neuroadaptations affect reward, memory, attention and motivation. Thus, from an addiction model perspective, sex can hijack the natural functioning of the reward pathway in some individuals, leading to addictive behavior.

The sex addiction model contends that in addition to being positively reinforcing through the release of dopamine and other neurotransmitters, sex can be negatively reinforcing. Over time, sex can become addictive when it is used as the primary or, sometimes, sole method of regulating undesirable emotions. In other words, sexual behavior can be negatively reinforcing when it functions as an avoidance strategy and is used to escape emotional pain. In a negative feedback loop, however, the individual often feels shame as a result of his or her out-of-control sexual behavior. Paradoxically, this shame may become part of the undesirable emotions that the person then strives to regulate through sexual acts. From an attachment perspective, it is likely that these individuals never learned to coregulate emotionally and, instead, try to autoregulate emotions.

Scholars who primarily emphasize the negative reinforcement of sexual behavior often argue for terminology other than sex addiction, such as compulsive behavior or hypersexuality. However, the fact that sex provides both negative reinforcement (i.e., escape) and positive reinforcement (i.e., pleasure) seems to give credence to the addiction model.

Although controversy remains, the mental health field is steadily embracing the notion that behaviors can become addictive. For example, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) included the diagnosis for gambling disorder in a chapter titled “Substance Use and Addictive Disorders.” In addition, internet gaming disorder and nonsuicidal self-injury (which some conceptualize as a behavioral addiction) were included in Section III as conditions in need of further study.

A diagnosis of hypersexual disorder was considered for the DSM-5 but ultimately was not included. The American Society of Addiction Medicine, however, revised its official definition of addiction to include both chemicals and naturally reinforcing behaviors. Furthermore, within the World Health Organization, the Working Group on Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders for the 11th version of the International Classification of Diseases has recommended a diagnosis of compulsive sexual behavior. The organization determined the need for additional research to classify sexual behavior as addictive but clearly recognizes that out-of-control sexual behavior is a public health issue.

In addition, the recent surge of public concern related to pornography use and related erectile dysfunction among relatively young men (as evidenced by high traffic on websites dedicated to helping individuals “reboot” or discontinue use of pornography) has contributed to the influx of neuroimaging studies exploring addiction to pornography. Researchers have confirmed that the same regions of the brain activated by drug stimuli also are activated by online sexual stimuli and that addictive sexual behavior may be associated with decreased gray matter and diminished connectivity in the brain.

Types of sex addiction

Scholars conceptualize two types of sex addiction. The profile for the classic type includes early attachment wounds, family-of-origin issues and trauma histories, culminating in insecure attachment strategies in adulthood. Research shows a clear link between problematic sexual behavior and insecure attachment styles, and the majority of individuals in treatment for sex addiction have experienced trauma. For individuals with classic sex addiction, their sexual behavior may have been a primary means to fulfill attachment needs or escape emotional pain. Over time, however, the behavior became compulsive and out of control as the natural longing for sex became a need and then an addiction.

Recently, a second contemporary type of sex addiction has been identified among individuals without the classic profile of trauma or attachment wounds. Instead, the contemporary type emerges as a result of chronic, excessive exposure to sexual stimuli, especially in the form of pornography or cybersex, made more readily available when the internet became ubiquitous. Sex researcher Alvin Cooper referred to cybersex as a triple-A engine, offering affordability, anonymity and accessibility to users.

Online sexual images and videos are pervasive, and current estimates suggest that the average age of first exposure to pornography is 11. This initial exposure is often accidental on the part of the child, with pornography sites known to purchase domain names of commonly misspelled children’s websites (referred to as cybersquatting). Over time, however, pornography becomes a supernormal stimulus reshaping the brain by repetitive experiences of pleasure associated with online sexual images. The brain responds to this hyperactivity in the reward pathway by decreasing natural dopamine production and receptors. Consequently, with decreased natural dopamine production, those with sex addiction may feel mildly depressed at baseline, inducing cravings for sexual behavior to alleviate the negative mood. Thus, whether classic or contemporary, sex addiction leads to changes in brain circuitry, which, in turn, perpetuates the addictive cycle.

The nature of sex addiction

Among individuals for whom sex has become addictive, the condition is all-consuming. When those with sex addiction are not engaging in sexual behaviors (acting out), they likely are thinking about them (fantasy and mental preoccupation), getting ready for them (preparation and ritualization) or recovering from the consequences (physically and emotionally).

Sensitization caused by neuroadaptations may lead individuals to seek novel or more intense sexual stimuli to achieve the desired effect (otherwise known as tolerance). For example, an individual may shift from nonviolent to violent pornography or change from streaming cybersex to partnered anonymous sex. Those with sex addiction begin to live a double life as they hide their out-of-control sexual behaviors from others, withdraw and isolate. Furthermore, many people with sex addiction lose sexual interest in their romantic partners and experience sexual dysfunction because of classic conditioning in which arousal is paired with alternative stimuli such as a computer. The addiction affects the individual physically, psychologically, spiritually, relationally and emotionally. Although sex addiction begins to control these individuals’ lives, they often are reluctant to tell anyone about their experience because of intense feelings of shame and self-loathing.

Addictive sexual behavior can manifest in a variety of ways, from compulsive masturbation, anonymous sex and prostitution to compulsive sexual relationships, voyeurism or rape. Indeed, some sexual acting-out behaviors can cross the legal line and fall into the realm of sexual offenses, but the majority of those with sex addiction do not offend; rather, they engage in legal forms of compulsive sexual behavior.

Sex offenders generally have distinct profiles from sex-addicted nonoffenders. Specifically, sex offenders are more impulsive; engage in more intrusive behaviors; respond to offenses with hatred, anger and entitlement; and have low remorse. This profile differs from the progressive trajectory of sex addiction that tends to include more frequent, yet less intrusive, acting out; triggers shame, despair and powerlessness; and is met with high remorse. When sexual acting-out behaviors cross the line of legal offense, those who are sexually addicted are legally responsible for the consequences of their actions despite having an addiction (much like someone with alcohol addiction who injures another person while driving under the influence).

Although individuals with addiction are not responsible for “giving themselves” sex addiction, they are responsible for their recovery through seeking help and working a treatment program. Increasing public awareness about sex addiction can help promote early access to professional treatment, with the hope being that this step will aid in avoiding decades of negative consequences both for individuals with sex addiction and for others who may be affected.

Clinical considerations

Given that sex addiction can include myriad sexual behaviors, it is important for clinicians to assess and screen appropriately. Most sex addiction emerges in late adolescence and young adulthood, so school counselors and community clinicians working with young clients can provide early intervention by regularly screening for sex addiction. Counselors are encouraged to broach the subject of sex in counseling and explore clients’ relationships with their sexual activities, such as masturbating, sexting, hooking up, using pornography, engaging in cybersex, using sexual apps and engaging in compulsive sexual relationships.

Despite the fact that sex addiction emerges early, most individuals do not seek professional treatment until later in life as a result of experiencing often extreme negative consequences (i.e., “hitting rock bottom”). Accordingly, all clinicians should be screening for a loss of control over sexual behaviors, continued engagement in sexual behaviors despite negative consequences, and mental preoccupation or cravings. Along with informal screening and exploration, many formal assessments for sexual compulsivity and addiction exist, including the Sexual Addiction Screening Test, the Sexual Compulsivity Scale and the Sexual Dependency Inventory. The use of these instruments can help clinicians better understand their clients and coconstruct appropriate treatment goals.

Once counselors identify the presence of sex addiction, they have many tools and treatment programs to assist in helping clients reach long-term recovery. Unlike recovery from chemical addictions, the goal of sex addiction treatment is not abstinence from all sexual acts, but rather the development of healthy sexuality. It is the compulsive, detrimental sexual behavior that counselors and clients work to eradicate.

To help clarify recovery from sex addiction, many clinicians and 12-step recovery programs (such as Sex Addicts Anonymous) use the three-circles activity. With a sponsor or counselor, those with sex addiction draw three concentric circles. In the innermost circle, the client lists all unhealthy sexual behaviors that have led to negative consequences and over which the individual has lost control. These are the behaviors from which the client is choosing to abstain.

In the middle circle, the client lists behaviors that may lead to sexual acting out. Identifying middle-circle behaviors is important from a neurological perspective. The amygdala is responsible for emotional memory; thus, it remembers stimuli associated with the experience of pleasure. After years of sex addiction, individuals likely have associated specific locations, sounds, sights, smells and actions with sexual pleasure. The middle circle, therefore, includes any stimuli, such as excessive fantasizing, cruising or sexually objectifying others, that may trigger the amygdala and lead to sexual craving.

Finally, the client uses the outermost circle to identify healthy behaviors that will support the individual’s recovery. These behaviors might include participating in 12-step groups, engaging in counseling, fostering spiritual practices, exercising, eating healthy, keeping home and work spaces nonchaotic, spending time doing recreational activities and increasing healthy social support.

Many counseling approaches and interventions, including cognitive-behavioral approaches, psychodynamic approaches, acceptance and commitment therapy, motivational interviewing, art therapy, group counseling, couple and family counseling, and even psychopharmacology, are appropriate for work with sex addiction. It is important to note that recovery from sex addiction often spans years rather than months. Clients, family members and partners may erroneously believe that recovery occurs within a matter of weeks and can become disheartened when initial attempts to change behavior are unsuccessful. Providing psychoeducation about the neurobiology of sex addiction can offer a more accurate perspective and create realistic expectations. Clients can find hope in the fact that, in time, the brain can heal and resolve dysregulation in the reward circuitry. This healing process takes time, however, and the completion of specific tasks such as those outlined in Patrick Carnes’ 30 tasks of recovery.

Additionally, sex addiction may not be the only concern addressed in treatment. Given the common mechanisms underlying addiction, it is not surprising that coaddictions to gambling, food, gaming, the internet or substances often exist among those with sex addiction. Furthermore, research supports the prevalence of comorbid mental health problems, including bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, among those with sex addiction. Finally, a trauma-informed perspective may be necessary to help clients resolve trauma to improve emotion regulation.

Clinicians should take an integrated approach to address all addictive and mental health concerns in treatment. Integrated care may be more complex than addressing one concern at a time, but diverse treatment teams, supplemental or adjunct resources, and holistic recovery plans can best help clients reach long-term health and wholeness.

Advocating for clients

One of the most necessary forms of advocacy for this population is increased awareness related to sex addiction. During the Masters Tournament in 2010, roughly six months after the story broke concerning Tiger Woods’ sexual behavior and treatment for sex addiction, someone flew a plane over the Augusta National Golf Club with a banner reading, “Sex addict? Yeah. Right. Sure. Me too.”

It is inappropriate for anyone outside of Woods’ personal and professional circle to try to determine a clinical diagnosis for his case, but the plane and banner reflect a popular public sentiment: Sex addiction is not real. Advocates can work to increase public knowledge relating to sex addiction and dispense critical research about the condition.

Additionally, mental health professionals can take several practical steps to advocate for clients who are sexually addicted. Currently, many counseling centers do not include information about sex addiction on their websites or relevant items on their intake forms. This lack of acknowledgment may inadvertently communicate to clients that sex addiction is not an appropriate topic for counseling. Thus, one of the simplest forms of advocacy is to include the experience of compulsive sexual behavior on websites, advertisements and client intake forms.

Another important advocacy effort is to acknowledge that individuals of all genders can have sex addiction. Specifically, when community groups, media spokespeople or well-meaning educators leave women out of the conversation about addiction to sex or pornography, they add a layer of stigma for these individuals. Although prevalence rates may differ among genders (about 1 in 7 of those with sex addiction are women), it does not discount the salience of sex addiction among female populations.

Finally, the most recent standards of the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs require educators to teach students about theory and etiology of addictive behaviors. Therefore, counselor training programs can advocate for future clients by infusing relevant, up-to-date information regarding sex (and other behavioral) addictions in the counseling curriculum.

Conclusion

Much work is needed to decrease the stigma and shame associated with sex addiction. Although stigma exists with any addiction, it seems particularly poignant with regard to compulsive sexual behavior. In the cycle of sex addiction, shame serves as both a precursor and a consequence of sexual acting out. Raising public awareness regarding the nature of sex addiction can help combat this shame.

Rather than conceptualizing compulsive sexuality as a moral failing, the addiction model provides a framework to empower clients to manage their condition while offering effective tools for recovery. Controversy may always exist regarding the conceptualization of sex addiction, but it is imperative to continue the conversation, increase empirical evidence and engage in advocacy efforts to serve and support this population.

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Knowledge Share articles are developed from sessions presented at American Counseling Association conferences.

Amanda L. Giordano is an assistant professor at the University of Georgia. A licensed professional counselor, she specializes in addictions counseling and multiculturalism. Giordano serves on the executive board for the Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling and the editorial review boards for the Journal of Addictions & Offender Counseling and Counseling and Values. Contact her at amandaleegiordano@gmail.com.

Craig S. Cashwell, a professor in the Department of Counseling and Educational Development at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, is an American Counseling Association fellow. Additionally, he maintains a part-time private practice focusing on couple counseling and addictions counseling. He serves as editor-in-chief of Counseling and Values.

One of Cyndi Matthews’ most vivid memories of growing up in a fundamentalist Christian church was watching the minister point at her brother’s best friend during a service and say, “You don’t belong here. Get out.” The reason? The boy was gay.

Matthews, a licensed professional counselor supervisor (LPC-S), says that incident was her first glimpse of a pattern of spiritual abuse directed at congregation members who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning (LGBTQ). The animosity that leaders of the church held for LGBTQ members did not fit Matthews’ conception of Christianity. This religious cognitive dissonance would lead her to leave the church and subsequently focus her research and counseling practice on spiritual abuse.

Matthews, a member of the American Counseling Association, sees many LGBTQ clients in her Garland, Texas, private practice who struggle to reconcile their religious beliefs and experiences with their affectional orientation or gender identity. Many of these clients grew up internalizing a message that it wasn’t just their identity or orientation and behaviors that were wrong, but that there was something “wrong” with them as people, she says.

The LGBTQ community has frequently encountered intolerance from religious institutions. Although there are religious traditions that are affirming and open to LGBTQ people, many are not, says Misty Ginicola, lead editor of the book Affirmative Counseling With LGBTQI+ People, published by ACA. Nonaffirming religious groups usually have markedly rigid beliefs — there is wrong and there is right, and nowhere in between, she says. These are the voices that call for anti-LGBTQ legislation under the guise of exercising their religious freedom. As a result, even LGBTQ individuals who do not identify as religious are affected by nonaffirming religious beliefs, points out Ginicola, a member of ACA.

This conflict has produced not just a broader culture clash, but in some religious traditions, a pernicious history of rejection and outright abuse of LGBTQ individuals. Many of Matthews’ LGBTQ clients have been subjected to a wide range of religiously sponsored or endorsed abusive techniques intended to “cure” them. One client — a gay male — was not allowed to cross his legs or wear pink. He was directed to pray anytime he had “gay” thoughts and to replace “gay behavior” with Scripture reading or increased proselytizing. Other of Matthews’ clients were sent to church-sponsored “reparative” retreats where they were prayed over or even subjected to “exorcisms.” Matthews, an assistant professor of counseling at the University of Louisiana Monroe, has also been told about particularly horrific techniques such as forced ice baths and electroconvulsive therapy.

The emotional and even physical abuse that some LGBTQ individuals from strict religious traditions experience is so traumatic that Matthews says all of the survivors she has encountered in her practice were actively suicidal or had been suicidal in the past. At the same time, because clients from strict religious traditions have internalized the idea that what they are told in their churches is God’s word, it is often difficult for them to label their experience as abuse, she says.

Even LGBTQ individuals who break away from their religious traditions so they can fully embrace their affectional or gender orientation have a hard time discounting what they were taught. If someone who identifies as LGBTQ has been told from a young age that they are inherently wrong and immoral, it creates an inner message that lingers, says Ginicola, an LPC in West Haven, Connecticut, whose practice specialties include LGBTQ issues.

Brady Sullivan, a provisionally licensed professional counselor specializing in LGBTQ issues, has worked with clients who believed God hated them. “Every time they engage in sexual or romantic behavior or participate in pride activities, they feel an overwhelming sense of guilt,” he says.

Examining beliefs

Matthews says that, despite their experiences with spiritual abuse, some of her LGBTQ clients still want to find a way to reconnect with religion or at least retain a sense of personal spirituality. Others no longer want anything to do with religion; they come to counseling to untwine the message of being sinful or wrong from their sense of self and sexuality or gender identity.

The therapeutic relationship that is the core of counseling is especially crucial with clients attempting to navigate a conflict between their religious upbringing or current beliefs and their identity as LGBTQ, Matthews says. When people have been taught to seek comfort and strength from a religious tradition that then ends up rejecting them, it feels like a violation of trust, she says. Unfortunately, that sense of rejection can be further compounded when people in the LGBTQ community seek therapy from a practitioner who turns out to be nonaffirming. Matthews always asks clients if they have previously been in counseling and, if so, what that experience was like. This information helps her to address the therapeutic trauma that some LGBTQ clients have experienced.

Matthews screens for spiritual abuse as part of her intake process. She asks clients about their religious background and beliefs and if their experiences are something they would like to address as part of the counseling process. She says that LGBTQ clients from strict or fundamentalist religious backgrounds are highly likely to have experienced spiritual abuse, so the question usually isn’t “if” they will need to work through their experiences, but “when.”

These clients don’t always disclose or even perceive a history of spiritual abuse. However, counselors can look for a number of red flags, Matthews says. These include clients who:

Talk about how they are the cause of their own suffering and need to attend church more and to be more faithful and forgiving to alleviate their suffering.

Display magical thinking attached to “good” and “bad” behavior; they commonly believe that accidents, illnesses and other tragedies are the result of their “sinful” behavior.

Have a difficult time setting boundaries and saying no because of underlying guilt and shame.

Feel powerless to take action or make decisions because they fear repercussions from family members, church members, church leaders or their personal deity.

It is critical that counselors understand their role as helping professionals dedicated to providing a safe and affirming space for all clients, including those who are LGBTQ, says Ginicola, a professor of counseling and school psychology and coordinator of the clinical mental health counseling program at Southern Connecticut State University. Simply sitting with clients, supporting them in their pain and validating their experiences helps the healing process begin, she says.

Once clients are ready to talk about their conflicted views and feelings related to their sexual or gender identity and their experiences with religion, Matthews helps them explore the harmful beliefs they have been holding on to and works to dispel them. She is careful not to disparage clients’ faith traditions but does encourage them to question whether the condemnation they have been confronted with is actually the voice of God.

Lorrie Byrd Slater, a licensed professional counselor-mental health services provider in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who counsels many survivors of spiritual abuse, uses her knowledge of Christianity to help clients examine their beliefs. She urges clients whose religious communities have condemned or disparaged them to consider what the Scriptures say about the nature of Jesus Christ. She then asks them if their experiences are in line with Christ’s teachings. Slater, an ACA member, also reminds clients that their particular church is just one church out of many; other places of worship hold very different — and affirming — views of LGBTQ individuals.

Ginicola says cognitive behavior therapy is particularly helpful when confronting clients’ internalized beliefs that being LGBTQ is wrong or sinful. She asks clients to consider how those beliefs began and who taught them that they are inherently wrong. Ginicola exposes clients to religious viewpoints that are affirming to LGBTQ individuals through documentaries and bibliotherapy or putting them in touch with affirming pastoral help. She also encourages clients to explore a question for themselves: If God is love, as they have been taught by their faith communities, how could he hate them?

Practicing GRACE

Both Ginicola and Sullivan have found the GRACE model — originally developed by counselor R. Lewis Bozard and pastor Cody J. Sanders — particularly helpful for guiding LGBTQ clients through the resolution of their conflicted religious views. Sullivan, who is practicing part time in addition to earning his doctorate in counselor education at the University of Missouri–Saint Louis, emphasizes that the model is just a guide, not a step-by-step process. For most clients, he uses only a few of the “stages.” The process involves:

Goals: Sullivan, an ACA member, talks to clients about their religious background, asking questions such as what faith tradition they grew up in (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, other) and whether they identify with a particular denomination or sect. He also asks how they feel about what they have experienced, both good and bad.

Ultimately, he wants to find out what clients are hoping to achieve by addressing the conflicts they feel between religious belief and who they are as a person. Sullivan asks: “If you woke up tomorrow and all these issues went away, what would that look like?”

As Sullivan guides clients through their background and goals, he stays alert for reactions, particularly any signs of trauma. If a client seems too upset in a particular session, he will back off and switch to another topic.

Renewal of hope: This stage involves uncovering shame and abuse and working through it, Sullivan says. For instance, some nonaffirming religious leaders individually confront LGBTQ congregants with questions about their affectional orientation or gender identity. These confrontations often take on the tone of an interrogation, culminating witha reminder that “God hates those people.”

Sullivan tells clients that although a particular pastor might think that God hates LGBTQ people, many other religious leaders and faith communities do not hold that belief. If clients are amenable, Sullivan offers to help them make contact with an affirmative pastor to talk about religious views that do not condemn those who are LGBTQ.

Action: This stage represents decision time. Sullivan and the client have talked about the religious conflict for a while, and together they’ve processed the client’s trauma and grief. What does the client want to do now?

Sullivan says his role is to explain clients’ options to them and help them identify what they need to do to move forward. Some clients choose to remain planted in their current religious tradition, unready to move on from a community in which their spiritual roots were cultivated, even if that means continuing to wrestle with painful beliefs and practices. Other clients want to stay under the larger umbrella of their current religious faith but choose to find another church home or denomination that is more affirming of LGBTQ people. Still others decide to make a more drastic change, such as converting to a different faith system entirely. And, finally, Sullivan says, many clients decide that they no longer want anything to do with religion at all.

Connection: For some clients, processing their past experiences and finding a new place to worship isn’t enough, Sullivan says. Instead, they need to examine their personal relationship with God or whatever higher power they relate to. Ultimately, this involves clients identifying what God or that higher power believes about them and how that affects their view of their religion as a whole.

For instance, Sullivan might probe by asking clients what they believe God’s reaction is when they engage in sexual activity with someone of the same sex. He says that most clients are only able to develop the view that although they are sinning, God loves them anyway.

Sullivan does not like to end the GRACE process with this belief still intact. However, he says the pervasive sense of shame that many LGBTQ clients feel often makes it difficult for them to let go of the notion that living a life that embraces their true affectional or gender identity is sinful behavior. “It’s a struggle to get people to realize that God has made them this way and to accept that they are not sinners,” he says.

Empowerment: Sullivan acknowledges that he doesn’t see this stage achieved very often. It takes place only after clients have taken some kind of step such as attending a different church, joining a church-affiliated small group gathering or Bible study, or connecting with a church-sponsored social event, he says. Counselors have an obligation to help clients process these experiences, particularly if they are negative.

“The goal of the empowerment phase is to keep the client traveling down the path toward connection of spiritual and sexual identities, even if they have a negative experience,” Sullivan explains. “This is important because self-confidence and comfort with sexual identity are increased as a result of exploring the intersection between spiritual and sexual identities.”

In reality, Sullivan says, most clients who go through the GRACE model still struggle to reconcile their religion beliefs with being LGBTQ, but they are more at peace with the conflict.

Looking for aff irmative alternatives

One way that counselors can support LGBTQ clients who want to maintain their religious affiliation but feel conflicted is to help them find an affirming congregation, Sullivan says. However, he stresses that counselors must do their due diligence. It isn’t enough to read that the church is part of an affirming denomination or to see that it includes a rainbow flag on its website.

To ensure that he isn’t sending clients into a religious environment that appears affirming but actually isn’t, Sullivan makes a point of calling churches directly. He tells whoever answers the phone that he is a gay man and wants to know the church’s stance on the LGBTQ community. If the person tells him that he is welcome to attend the church and that the church will pray for him and support him in efforts to leave the gay lifestyle, Sullivan thanks them for their honesty but says the church is not for him. Although “welcoming” to LGBTQ people on the surface, churches that hold those types of beliefs do not make it on to Sullivan’s “recommended” list for clients.

Matthews notes that some faith traditions pose a specific and significant challenge to LGBTQ individuals who want to maintain a religious connection. Churches such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church) embrace particularism — the belief that their particular religious tradition is the only authentic path to God. These paths rest on tenets that are significantly different from what mainstream Christians believe.

For those raised in a church that embraces particularism (and is not affirming of LGBTQ individuals), pursuing their faith by switching denominations is akin to losing their religion entirely, Matthews says. When someone has been told all their life that there is only one path to becoming a Christian and gaining salvation, envisioning another form of faith and worship is almost inconceivable, she explains.

LGBTQ individuals struggling to align their personal and religious identities may look to their families for support. Unfortunately, families are sometimes part of the problem, Matthews says. Many families find it difficult to reconcile their religious beliefs with the reality of their child identifying as LGBTQ.

Matthews has worked with couples from strict religious backgrounds grappling with how to support a child who, according to what the parents hear in church, is living a sinful lifestyle. She provides these parents with psychoeducation by recommending books, giving them information about PFLAG (an advocacy and support organization for the friends, families and allies of those who identify as LGBTQ) and answering their questions, such as whether being LGBTQ is a choice. Matthews might also ask the couple to look for what the Bible actually says about being gay rather than relying solely on what their religious leaders say.

Counselors must also consider that particularly for LGBTQ people of color (POC) or those of low socioeconomic status (SES), leaving their religion behind may also mean losing their community, Ginicola says. “If you are a POC or have low SES, religion is not just a place you go sometimes; it could be a lifeline,” she says.

Losing a whole community can be devastating for anyone, but particularly for someone who has multiple marginalized identities, Ginicola continues. She gives the hypothetical example of a gay black man who, by coming out, loses his church. But when he turns to the LGBTQ community, he may encounter sporadic instances of racism. As a result, he ends up feeling like he is not fully accepted — and, thus, can never feel totally comfortable — anywhere.

Counselors need to let those with marginalized multiple identities know that counseling is one place where they can be fully themselves, Ginicola says. Counseling can encompass all of who these clients are — black, Christian, gay — without judging. Many people seem to think that they can identify either as LGBTQ or religious, but not both, Ginicola notes. She believes the idea that these two identities can’t coexist is harmful because faith — believing in something greater than ourselves, even if it isn’t a deity — is an integral part of life.

Given their negative experiences, some LGBTQ people lose all desire to return to organized religion. Regardless, spirituality can remain a significant part of who they are as people, says Slater, an assistant professor of counseling and associate dean of students at Richmont Graduate University. Spirituality is not the same as religion. In fact, an individual’s spirituality may not even encompass God. Spirituality is simply something that is bigger than us and that provides people with a sense of purpose, Slater says. For some people, that sense of spirituality and meaning can derive from nature, philosophy, personal ideology, science or even the belief in human rights for all, she explains.

Even when LGBTQ clients ultimately decide that they no longer identify with their past religious faith, Matthews tells them that it is possible to hold on to certain positive aspects and values of their religious upbringing that still resonate with them, such as practicing generosity and gratitude and loving others. Or, if these individuals previously enjoyed reading the Bible as literature, she might suggest that they explore other religious or spiritual texts outside of their faith tradition. If the ritual of prayer once provided clients with a sense of peace, she might encourage them to replace that experience with something nonreligious, such as a meditation practice.

Wearing blinders

Counselors who identify as religious know that imposing their values on clients is unethical, and most counseling professionals work hard to bracket their beliefs. Laura Boyd Farmer, an assistant professor of counselor education at Virginia Tech, has published numerous research studies on LGBTQ issues. She recently completed a research study that has not yet been published but that was presented at the 2017 ACA Conference & Expo in San Francisco. The study consisted of a survey that asked 455 mental health and school counselors how they thought their religious beliefs affected their work with LGBTQ clients.

Some respondents said that because their religious traditions were based on acceptance and the idea that Jesus loves everyone, their beliefs had a positive effect, helping them to provide LGBTQ-affirmative counseling. Other participants said their work was in line with their religious tradition, which calls on believers not to judge. Some counselors said that they disagreed with the LGBTQ “lifestyle” but chose not to judge. Others disclosed that their religious beliefs pose a conflict with which they struggle — striving to practice ethically despite their nonacceptance of LGBTQ individuals. Some respondents said that they agreed with the statement “love the sinner, hate the sin” and that this belief did not negatively affect their counseling of LGBTQ clients.

When counselors refuse to counsel LGBTQ clients because their religious beliefs tell them that doing so is wrong, that represents an obvious violation of the ACA Code of Ethics. But where things get tricky is with counselors who take a low-profile nonaffirming stance, says Farmer, an LPC who provides pro bono counseling for LGBTQ individuals in the Roanoke, Virginia, area. These are the counselors who say that they don’t agree with the “lifestyle” but wouldn’t refuse to counsel LGBTQ clients. These practitioners may think that no matter what their beliefs are, they can still maintain unconditional positive regard for their clients, but they might be operating with a big blind spot, Farmer contends.

To illustrate her point, she describes a recent casual conversation she had with a practicing counselor. This person talked about working with gay clients despite believing that being LGBTQ is a sin. The counselor said that they just tried not to judge. Farmer, an ACA member, asked how the practitioner was able to do that. Their response: “To be honest, it doesn’t come up.”

In providing counseling yet not fully accepting LGBTQ clients, this counselor was attempting to manage conflicts with their personal religious beliefs by avoiding pertinent topics. For example, Farmer says the practitioner was working with a gay youth struggling with depression, yet the challenges of identifying as LGBTQ “never came up.” Farmer says this makes her wonder how many other professional counselors are walking around wearing blinders.

Counselors like the one in Farmer’s story are not fully owning — or understanding — their bias, Ginicola says. A bias isn’t just, “I hate these people,” she explains. It’s also that working with someone who is LGBTQ doesn’t feel “right” and the counselor isn’t comfortable with it. By not confronting the discomfort, counselors are much more likely to miss signs (even if unintentionally), miscommunicate and project their worldview on the client rather than identifying the real issues, Ginicola asserts.

Disaffirming counselors resent that ACA’s ethics code requires them not just to set aside their personal beliefs to work with LGBTQ clients but to actually be advocates for them, Ginicola says. These counselors don’t view the experiences of LGBTQ clients as valid, she adds, and it is impossible to work effectively with clients unless you intrinsically embrace their value.

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Additional resources

To learn more about the importance of exploring aspects of religion and spirituality in clients’ lives, take advantage of the following select resources offered by the American Counseling Association:

Catherine Beckett, an American Counseling Association member with a private practice in Portland, Oregon, has made it a habit to avoid using “must” phrases with clients. “It sends a message to the client about what they’ve experienced,” says Beckett, who specializes in grief counseling. “I don’t ever want to say, ‘Oh, you must feel so guilty,’ or ‘You must feel so isolated,’ because that may not be the case at all.”

A case in point: when clients reveal in counseling that they have had an abortion at some point in their past. Some clients consider that experience to be just another piece of their life story, free of any negative associations. For others, the experience can evoke a range of issues, from spiritual and familial turmoil to attachment difficulties and feelings of loss. When dealing with such a highly charged topic, counselors must be prepared to put their own personal views aside to support clients who fall into either camp — and those who present a range of emotions in between.

Research cited by an American Psychological Association task force found that the majority of women who elect to have an abortion will not experience mental health difficulties afterward (see apa.org/pi/women/programs/abortion/). In February 2017, JAMA Psychiatry published a study titled “Women’s mental health and well-being 5 years after receiving or being denied an abortion.” The study observed 956 women over the course of five years, including 231 who initially were turned away from abortion facilities. Among the authors’ conclusions: “In this study, compared with having an abortion, being denied an abortion may be associated with greater risk of initially experiencing adverse psychological outcomes. Psychological well-being improved over time so that both groups of women eventually converged. These findings do not support policies that restrict women’s access to abortion on the basis that abortion harms women’s mental health.”

Even though most women will not experience long-term mental health problems after an abortion, some may still endure feelings of loss or encounter other negative emotions caused by external factors such as culture or family. For certain clients, a past abortion experience, whether it took place one month ago or decades ago, can be at the root of a range of issues — low self-esteem, relationship problems, disenfranchised grief — that surface during counseling sessions.

Beckett notes that most of the women she works with aren’tquestioning their decision to have an abortion but rather “struggling to process it and place it in the narrative of their own lives in a way that feels comfortable.”

“As a practitioner, you should know about [abortion] and understand that within the population you’re seeing, it’s probably in their story,” says Jennie Brightup, a licensed clinical marriage and family therapist in private practice outside of Wichita, Kansas. “You need to be prepared to know how to work with it.”

Counselors should approach the revelation of an abortion just like any other experience or issue that clients may have in their histories, Brightup says. “Have an open mind. Allow it to be something that can be a problem for your client. See that it could be an issue … [and] have some knowledge about how to treat it.”

‘You think you’re alone’

The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization, estimates that in 2014 (the most recent data available), 926,200 abortions were performed among women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States. This comes out to a rate of 14.6 abortions per 1,000 women.

The institute notes that this marks America’s lowest abortion rate since the process was legalized nationwide by the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973. The U.S. abortion rate has seen a steady decline after peaking in 1980 and 1981 at close to 30 abortions per 1,000 women. Using the 2014 data, the Guttmacher Institute extrapolates that 5 percent of U.S. women will have an abortion by age 20; 19 percent will have an abortion by age 30; and 24 percent will have an abortion by age 45.

Abortion is more common than many people, including mental health practitioners, think, says Trudy Johnson, a licensed marriage and family therapist who presented on “Choice Processing and Resolution: Bringing Abortion After-Care Into the 21st Century”at ACA’s 2012 Conference & Expo in San Francisco. Johnson, who had an abortion in college, says that for many people, processing the abortion experience is “a slow burn. It doesn’t affect you until later on. [Many] women have had an abortion, but you think you’re alone. You don’t feel you get to grieve it. … It’s a gut-level thing, a tender place. Many have never told a soul,” says Johnson, who specializes in trauma resolution, including abortion-related issues.

Connecting issues

For clients who have yet to process and place a past abortion into their self-narrative, it can feel like a sadness that they can’t quite pinpoint or define. “It’s kind of like a phantom pain. It’s there, but you don’t know why,” Johnson says.

Clients with a variety of presenting issues may have unprocessed emotions surrounding a past abortion that could be compounding their struggles, Johnson says. These issues can include:

Depression and anxiety

Complicated grief

Anger

Shame and guilt (especially shame that is undefined or has no apparent cause)

Self-loathing and self-esteem issues

Relationship issues (including destructive relationships)

Destructive behaviors (including substance abuse)

For certain clients, their unprocessed emotions can feel like a weight they have carried and buried deep within themselves for a long time without sharing it with anyone, Johnson says.

Johnson recalls one client who initially came for couples counseling with her husband but eventually started seeing Johnson for individual counseling. During a session, Johnson recognized that the woman was becoming upset, so she handed her a blanket and pillow for comfort. The client put the blanket over her head, obscuring her face, and disclosed that she had had an abortion 18 years prior. Her family had shamed her for the decision, and her feelings of shame were still so overwhelming that putting the blanket over her head was the only way she could bring herself to talk about the experience, Johnson recounts.

“You just can’t imagine the shame that [some of] these clients carry,” says Johnson, a private practitioner who splits her time between Arizona and Tennessee. “They just have to talk about it. We, as professionals, can be that safe place.”

Clients who have had abortions sometimes question whether they have the right to grieve because there was a choice involved to terminate their pregnancies, says Beckett, who is an adjunct faculty member in the doctoral counseling program at Oregon State University. The concept of the experience of disenfranchised grief — those who are not supported in their grief because it is not culturally recognized or validated — applies in these instances, Beckett says. In fact, the disenfranchisement can be both external (a loss not recognized by the client’s culture) and internal (a loss that the client, individually, does not recognize).

“People do not have the same kind of support and validation [to grieve a loss] when they’re disenfranchised, and that is a huge part of abortion grief,” Beckett says. “The emotional aftermath is so impacted by spiritual, political and ethical values and beliefs. That will really color how they process it and how much they’re able to reach out and get support. This all needs to go into our assessment of a client. What was their experience, but also how are they talking to themselves about it? All of that should inform how we offer support.”

Broaching the subject

Practitioners might want to consider asking clients (female and male) about pregnancy loss, including abortion, on intake forms. Brightup asks clients about past pregnancy loss in a genogram exercise she does in the first few sessions of counseling. If the client mentions an abortion, she simply makes a note and keeps going. It is not a topic she feels a need to jump on immediately, she says, and she doesn’t want to risk retraumatizing clients or prompting them to talk about it if they are not ready. Some clients may not mention an abortion on an intake form or genogram because they don’t consider it a loss or associate it with trauma, Brightup says. Others have buried the issue so deep that they don’t think about it or feel that it is worth mentioning, she adds.

“When you’re hearing their story, you can find places to check in and ask questions. Most of the time, I allow them to come around and tell me. It’s a core secret. If you feel [judgmental] to them, they’ll never tell you and they’ll run [stop coming to therapy],” says Brightup, a certified eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapist.

Practitioner language is also important, Beckett notes. “For some people, asking [if they have an abortion in their past] is giving them permission to talk about it. And the way we ask about it may give them clues about whether or not it is safe to talk to us about it,” she says. “For example, there’s a difference between, ‘Is this something you have experience with?’ and ‘Well, you haven’t had an abortion, have you?’”

Even the word “abortion” can provoke an intense reaction for some clients, Johnson says. In some cases, she will use the phrase “pregnancy termination” or even “the A word” with clients who feel triggered and begin to close themselves off.

“You might need to say it differently,” Johnson advises. “Abortion immediately turns it into a political, socially charged [issue]. Changing the terminology helps it to be safer.”

The key is to foster a safe, trusted bond so that clients will feel free to bring the topic up themselves when they are ready, Johnson says. “The most important thing is building a relationship of safety,” she emphasizes.

Different points on a path

Clients who disclose having an abortion in their past may vary widely on how they feel about the procedure and how much they have processed those feelings.

“There are clients who will come in and do not report having any mental health issues related to their abortion experience. Understand that they’re out there. But the other side is out there too,” Brightup says. Practitioners must be prepared to work with clients who express either sentiment — or a range of feelings in between.

Counselors should watch their clients’ body language and other cues, especially in cases in which a client is emphatic or even defensive when talking about an abortion. It is wise to unpack the client’s experience and associated feelings over time, Brightup says.

If counselors disagree with a client’s assertions concerning how she feels about the procedure, “you can lose the client because they won’t come back [to therapy],” she says. “Agree with their narrative. In little pieces, once they trust you, you can come back to the story and probe a little, ask a few questions as gently and carefully as you can.”

Some clients will have fit the abortion into their self-narrative and moved on, whereas others won’t be as far along in the journey. Still others will have worked through their feelings surrounding the procedure in a healthy way previously but may find themselves struggling with it again as they move into another life stage such as pregnancy or motherhood, Beckett says.

This was the case for one of Beckett’s clients who sought counseling because she was struggling with powerful emotions that had resurfaced. The client had undergone an abortion when she was 17. Later in her life, she had a daughter, and that daughter was now turning 17 herself. Even though her daughter wasn’t facing any type of decision regarding pregnancy or abortion, her age triggered feelings in the client that needed more therapeutic attention.

The client’s abortion had been illegal at the time where she lived, so she had felt compelled to keep it a secret, Beckett explains. The client realized her daughter was now the age she had been when she had an abortion. “The mother saw, for the first time, how young she [had been] and how desperately she had needed love and support at the time, and she didn’t get it,” Beckett says. The realization was “exquisitely painful” for the client, but at the same time, it brought “a new level of compassion for her 17-year-old self,” Beckett recounts.

“She took a great deal of comfort in knowing that if her daughter were to get pregnant, it would be an entirely different experience. Her daughter would have the support of her family and better care,” Beckett says.

The hard work of unpacking

Just as clients will differ in the work they have done — or haven’t done — to process the emotions surrounding an abortion, the support and interventions they might need from a counselor will also vary.

“People grieve very differently, and we need to be ready to support people however they are doing it,” Beckett says. “Some people are going to want to take action or give back somehow. Others will respond to more creative processes or ritual creation. Others will want a quiet, safe place to process.”

Normalizing a client’s experience can be a much-needed first step. Beckett says that talking about how common abortion is, and the fact that many people feel a need to process their feelings afterward, can bring relief to clients. Practitioners can also help clients reframe their thoughts to realize that feelings of relief after the procedure are common, as is a fear of judgment and a sense of isolation that can accompany that fear.

“Figure out what this particular client’s experience is and then, if appropriate, offer normalization of that,” Beckett says. “Support them to determine what is needed to move them toward greater comfort and peace. Offer them ideas and support around getting those things that they need.”

In Brightup’s experience, post-abortion work with clients often falls into four quadrants:

Reconciling how clients feel about themselves

Engaging in grief work around how clients perceive and feel about the loss (if they do indeed view it as a loss)

Working through clients’ spiritual issues or any inner tensions related to “rules” that were broken

Working on clients’ relationships and how they relate to people: Are there areas that need healing?

From there, practitioners should tailor their approaches to meet each client’s individual needs and pacing, Brightup says. She often uses sand tray therapy as a tool to help clients talk about post-abortion loss and find closure. Journaling, writing letters or poems, creating art and engaging in other creative outlets can also be helpful, she says. Certain clients may respond to creating some kind of physical memorial or taking time out of a counseling session to do a remembrance with just the two of you, Brightup adds.

Beckett agrees that counselors should collaborate with clients to find a ritual or activity that works for them. Although many clients will make progress through talk therapy or by connecting in group work to those who have had similar experiences, others will feel a need to take some kind of action, Beckett says. Creating memorials and rituals, writing letters or participating in other creative interventions can help these clients to process their emotions and experiences.

For one of Beckett’s clients, healing involved creating a special ritual on what would have been her child’s due date. Each year, the client would be intentional about spending time with a child — whether a niece or a nephew or the child of a friend — who was the same age that her child would have been.

“She came in pretty soon after her abortion, and she knew she needed help to process it,” Beckett says. “She wasn’t questioning the decision, but she was having trouble [with the fact] that her life would move forward but the life of thebaby she had not had wouldn’t move forward. She wrote a letter to that baby expressing her caring and regret and explaining why she felt she couldn’t bring him or herinto the world. Every year on her due date, she would find a way to connect with a child she knew that would be that age. She would spend time with that child and make it a good day for them.”

Whereas this intervention helped this particular client to find peace, “for other clients, the thought of that would seem hellish,” Beckett stresses. “There’s no prescription for this. It’s a process of figuring out what is still remaining and needs to be released. Talk with the
client to find creative ways to be able to do that.”

Counselors can help clients navigate areas in which they feel emotionally stuck, Beckett explains. For example, one of her clients was struggling even though she had worked through many of the emotions she had experienced after an abortion. The client had three children, and when she became pregnant with a fourth, she and her partnermade the decisionto terminate the pregnancy.

“There was one part that she couldn’t get OK with: ‘I see myself as someone who takes care of others,’” Beckett says. “That’s where we focused: How did she define ‘taking care’? How did this decisionthreaten her self-concept? We dove into that area and she eventually realized that terminating the pregnancy was taking care of her fourth child. That was the best way to take care of that child,instead of bringing the child into an already-overwhelmed system that wouldn’t have been able to provide what the child needed.”

Johnson finds narrative therapy a useful approach when focusing on post-abortion issues with clients. Giving them the freedom to tell the story of their abortion — how old they were, how it happened, who came with them that day — can be powerful, she says. Sometimes clients won’t remember the details about their abortion because they’ve blocked them out, Johnson says, but as they open up and talk about the experience in therapy, they often start to recall things.

“This has been in their head for years. When they finally start talking about it, they go on and on because that’s [often] what they need,” Johnson says. “You can see the layers coming off as they’re processing it verbally, the whole story. … Letting them talk about the details and tell their story is a starting point.”

When relevant, Johnson also helps clients identify all the points of grief connected to the abortion beyond the loss of a pregnancy. For example, clients might have experienced a breakup with their romantic partners or the breakdown of a relationship with their parents or other family members either leading up to or after the abortion. Giving clients permission to grieve and accept the loss of these things is an important step, Johnson says.

There are “so many layers to this. The main thing [for counselors] is being a safe place. The impact of a hidden abortion could really be affecting the outcome of your therapy if it’s not addressed. Be aware that there could be this issue under all of the other stuff [the presenting issues],” Johnson says.

“Treat this as a disenfranchised and complicated grief situation, and take out all the political mess and pros and cons,” she continues. “The client has already made a choice. Let’s forget about that and just work on the grief. They’re not the same person that they were when they made the choice. They’re a different person now, so they need to have permission to revisit that time in their life and be free of it. The therapist is kind of a vessel of freedom for that, and it’s a wonderful place. … You’re helping them overcome the bondage, pain and grief that’s been with them for so long.”

Putting personal feelings aside

Abortion remains one of the most politically and socially polarizing issues in modern-day America. Despite this — or, in some cases, because of this — certain clients are going to need to work through issues related to abortion in the counseling office. A practitioner’s role is to be a support through it all, regardless of his or her own personal views on the topic.

Brightup urges counselors to rely on their training, which includes setting personal opinions aside and being what the client needs.

Creating a neutral and welcoming spacefor clients to talk about such a sensitive topic is paramount, Johnson agrees. “If you don’t have any experience working in this area, you can do more damage without meaning to,” she says. “Or, for some people, there’s a hidden implication that if you help a client through feelings related to an abortion, you’re condoning abortion.” That is simply not true, she stresses.

Beckett agrees. “Clients need a safe and nonjudgmental space to share [about their abortion experience], and that’s hard for some counselors based on their own belief system. It’s not going to be easy for all counselors — that affirmation of [the client’s] right to grieve. [But] a client needs support to determine what is needed to move them toward greater comfort and peace. Offer them ideas and support around getting those things that they need.”

As clients process post-abortion emotions, they may struggle with the decision to tell others, including a current or former partner. What should a counselor’s role be in that process? Read more in our online-exclusive article: wp.me/p2BxKN-54z

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Related resources

The upcoming ACA 2018 Conference & Expo in Atlanta includes an education session titled “Compassion and Self-compassion: Therapeutic Approaches to Heal From Grief and Loss” (Saturday, April 28, 7:30 a.m.). See the full conference program at counseling.org/conference.